ash holmegaarde to be

[RyanY]

Half-eye - Great advice. I've made a few of these and not only do the stiff tips act as levers but they can be super thin too allowing for less massive tips.
Youngbowyer33 - If you leave the tips thick enough from back to belly you should be able to get them down to 1/4" but make sure your string tracking is spot on cuz those thin tips can be unstable and bend sideways. Good luck.

[youngbowyer33]

i kinda like the look of them high, but i want a fast bow, so maybe ill go 1/2"

[half-eye]

young bowyer,
      The cross section of the tip is an ovoid (oval in nature) That cross section starts as soon as possible out of the midlimb fade area. You will get maore oval distance than I do decause your Stave w/flat grain is going to produce a bi-convex bow cross section.
      I talked with some folks at the Danish National Museum and this is what they passed along. The very early versions were high radius bi-convex, the middle period examples are low height bi-convex, and the later models were slight bi-convex to nearly flat. The rigid arms were nearly allways oval in cross section.
      The true Holmegard bow (Holmegaard, Denmark) is like a really long paddel bow (sort of) the back being convex and the belly rather flat. The Mollegabet bow (which we call a Holmegaard) is as described as above. The Sweedish Viking bows were slightly shorter, rigid handled with straight tapered limbs. The bellys are tapered in a straight line from fade to tip, the plan view of the limbs is also a straight taper but the tips are nearly twice that of the other two bows....maybe up to 3/4". The Sweedish version is based on only one recovered specimen. It might be possible it was the ancestor of the Welsh Short bow (no examples are known).
      Sorry for the boring history lesson but the point was that the stiff arms are really areodynamic and stiff at the same timeby being oval shaped.
half eye

[youngbowyer33]

wow i didnt understand alot of that, but im just going for the basics of a holmegaard,like the limb shape and profile, and i read that usually a holmegaard was similar to a backward bow or was, but for my bow i am going to have the back of the log be the back of the bow, but thanks for the information. You see, i am not trying to make a reproduction just a bow with similar qualities(i think that is the best way to say it), this seems like i am mad, but i am just telling you what i plan to do.

[half-eye]

Youngbowyer,
        Man you build that bow the way YOU want it! Don't let anyone tell you different either...this is where the "art" part of bowyery comes in....you have a vision and your gathering the info to help you get that done. I'm all for your effort....just remember the problem with being an artist....it is really hard to please yourself.
     I'm sure it will go well and cant wait to see it.
Half eye